+- kanji koohii FORUM (http://forum.koohii.com)
+-- Forum: Learning Japanese (http://forum.koohii.com/forum-4.html)
+--- Forum: General discussion (http://forum.koohii.com/forum-8.html)
+--- Thread: The AJATT Method (/thread-682.html)
The AJATT Method - Amiro - 2009-04-09
Thank you. Time to start mining sentences.
The AJATT Method - Nukemarine - 2009-04-10
Codexus Wrote:Grammar: ~500 - 1000 grammatical patternsPlus, in all that you get the "diminishing returns" on these. So, if you're starting off, I'd caution against doing All 3500 Kanji, then All 1000 Grammar patterns, then All 20,000 Vocabulary.
Kanji: ~3500 characters
Vocabulary: at least 20'000 - 30'000 words
You should be able to draw you own conclusions from that
Break them down into blocks and rotate through them. Right now, I'm going on the 80%, 95%, >95% concept.
In other words, systematically learn things that cover 80% of anything you'll come across in common usage: so that's the top 1000 kanji, 200 grammar patterns and 2000 vocabulary (pulling those numbers out my lower orifice). Then add on items that'll cover upto 95% of whatever you'll see (2050 Kanji, 500 grammar patterns, 6000 vocabulary). After that, it's finishing up some level 2 and 1a kanji (about 3100), the relevant grammar patterns (I guess use JLPT 1 as a guide, not sure) then constantly, everyday, add on new vocabulary words/phrases.
Reading the forums, we're all going at it our own way. I prefer a systematic approach. Others will go the sentence mining approach. I think there's validity in both.
The AJATT Method - Rina - 2009-05-01
For grammar I have the Genki Series. And will buy other books. But is there any book that has grammar points "explained" with example sentences? A bunch of 'em?
The AJATT Method - travis - 2009-05-01
There's always A Dictionary of Basic/Intermediate/Advanced Japanese Grammar. Together they are quite expensive though, Amazon has them listed for £132 for the three.
Basic
Intermediate
Advanced
It's pretty much matches your description in the way it's listed.
The AJATT Method - Tobberoth - 2009-05-01
Yeah, those three dictionaries are quite awesome. There's also Kanzen master books which give several example sentences for each grammar point needed on the JLPT tests.
The AJATT Method - rich_f - 2009-05-01
Wall of text ahead... sorry. I went through my Pile of Books to see what's good... here's some stuff to consider.
Understanding Basic Japanese Grammar isn't bad. (ISBN 4-7574-0168-X) 1900 yen, ALC. It's very basic, and covers a lot of stuff. Lots of English help. It covers the same material as Genki I and II. The vocab is really simple.
Kodansha also has some decent books that specialize in certain topics: The Handbook of Japanese Verbs (ISBN 978-4-7700-2683-5), $19.00, specializes in verbs. Lots of patterns with verbs, lots of little exercises. Lots of English.
There's also The Handbook of Japanese Adjectives and Adverbs (ISBN 4-7700-2879-2) $25.00, which does pretty much the same thing with adjectives and adverbs. There are a ton of other Kodansha books aimed at English speakers learning Japanese. You can drop a lot of money on them... be careful... >_>a
If you want less English and more Japanese, here are some alternatives: (You'll need to have some Japanese under your belt for these. Finish Genki I first, probably.) I prefer to go this route, because once you learn how to read these, you learn even more Japanese.
どんな時どんな使う日本語表現文型辞典 ISBN978-4-7574-1235-4, runs about 2800 yen, by ALC. It compiles all of the grammar points covered in both どんな時どんな使う books in one grammar dictionary. Grammar is explained in Japanese, English, Korean, and Chinese, with untranslated example sentences in Japanese.
It covers around 700 grammar points that will supposedly cover through 1級 of the JLPT. It's in Japanese alphabetical order, too, so you can just read the Japanese explanations, and only read the English explanation if you don't understand it at all. The explanations aren't as thorough as the Dictionaries of Basic/Intermediate/Advanced Japanese Grammar, but it's cheaper by far, and covers a lot of material. (Come to think of it, the explanations are *really* short. Like 1 paragraph short.)
If you're just starting out, and want the same explanations with more examples, then you might just want to start with どんな時どんな使う日本語表現文型200初・中級 (ISBN 4-7574-0174-4), runs about 2300 yen. Also from ALC. It covers 200 basic/intermediate grammar expressions with lots of examples. Same short explanations as in the dictionary above, though. It's short on English help. Lots of Japanese. It does have quizzes, tests, etc., which can be very useful. The other useful thing it does is present grammar topics in a methodical pattern, and it breaks down what you need to know by your Japanese level. That way, you could go through the book twice: once as a beginner, and learn all of the basics, then again as a more advanced beginner, and pick up the rest.
This book is kind of cool: 初級日本語文法と教え方のポイント (ISBN 978-4-88319-336-3), 2000 yen, by 3A. THIS BOOK IS ALL IN JAPANESE. But it explains basic Japanese grammar points in Japanese. It goes through 69 grammar points, shows you what a lot of people do wrong, why they do it wrong, how the grammar works, and how to do it right. VERY useful in that regard. I really love 3A's books.
But the downside is that you're going to need a pretty decent level of Japanese to understand any of it. NOT for beginners, unless you're willing to go at it with an electronic dictionary, and look up some unfamiliar phrases. If you are, you might gain some useful insights. If you're HARDCORE, then this book is for you.
There's also a 中級 version (ISBN 978-4-88319-445-2) 2000 yen that covers 54 intermediate grammar points.
Finally, here's a good book that will help you review all the stuff you should have learned in Genki I and II, and help you test it all. It's mostly in Japanese, with some English explanations, but no sentence translations. 初級日本語文法総まとめポイント２０ (ISBN 978-4-88319-328-8) 1400 yen, 3A. There's also a 中級 version. The 初級 version is kind of short, but it covers 20 topic areas, and it's chock full of stuff to work on. EDIT: ah, I should explain, it has a bunch of tests and exercises to do to check to make sure you understand how to use all of that grammar.
... end wall of text.
The AJATT Method - igordesu - 2009-05-01
I suppose it's not really a book, but have you heard about Tae Kim's Grammar Guide?
http://www.guidetojapanese.org/
It's free and, in my opinion (for the little that it's worth), covers a fair bit of material. He has pretty good explanations (again, correct me if I'm talking out of my butt, here) and sufficient example sentences.
That being said, I wouldn't spend *too* long with grammar books as it can get boring pretty quickly. Maybe get a bit of a head start on vocabulary and sentence structures through a grammar guide or book, and then move onto having fun reading stuff that you enjoy. You know, you could pluck out a sentence or two now and then while you're reading manga or academic papers or instruction manuals or movie subtitles or old literature or whatever it is that you enjoy
edit: I forgot to mention that you can even download Tae Kim's Grammar Guide if you don't have convenient access to the Internet.
The AJATT Method - groovee_grl - 2009-05-01
travis Wrote:There's always A Dictionary of Basic/Intermediate/Advanced Japanese Grammar. Together they are quite expensive though, Amazon has them listed for £132 for the three.If anyone's interested in these, Whiterabbitpress.com has them on sale for $121.05 USD for all three. Their shipping prices are pretty reasonable too. It cost me just over $150 USD to ship to Canada.
Basic
Intermediate
Advanced
It's pretty much matches your description in the way it's listed.
The AJATT Method - Rina - 2009-05-01
THANK YOU everyone! Your posts were REALLY useful! Travis, I already had those books in sight and didn't buy the first one yet, because they were more expensive a few weeks back. I'm just afraid of romaji. I know it has kanji, but, for example, in the first 2 lessons of genki (also written in romaji/hiragana) I found myself reading the romaji because I couldn't just look to the hiragana, it was just frustrating.
BTW, do you know any european websites to buy these books? I mean, other than amazon, because amazon hasn't most of them (the ones written in japanese) ;_;
I'll take a look to tae kim, more than one year ago I went there (already could read hiragana) and didn't learn a thing because it hasn't furigana, but know I have a kanji dictionary and will understand and learn new kanji and grammar alongside.
Really appreciated.
The AJATT Method - igordesu - 2009-05-01
um, about the furigana and tae kim thing. you just have to hover your mouse over any of the words that are in kanji and a little box pops up with the pronunciation in hiragana/furigana.
The AJATT Method - rich_f - 2009-05-01
If you use BK1.jp, and rikaichan (to figure out how to read the pages), you can get the books much cheaper if you're willing to wait with slower shipping. (Shipping will make things cost more, of course.) Once you get the hang of it, it's not too bad. You can search for books by ISBN number, which is why I post them.
A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar ISBN 4-7890-0454-6 is 2806 yen, which is ~$29 USD.
A Dictionary of Intermediate Japanese Grammar ISBN 4-7890-0775-8 is 3700 yen.
A Dictionary of Advanced Japanese Grammar ISBN 978-4-7890-1295-9 is 3800 yen.
So all 3 are 10,300 yen. The deciding factor is going to be currency exchange and shipping. I'd say they weigh a little over 1.5 kilos total, but my scale is broken.
Since you're in Portugal, you might want to check with BK1 and find out how much it would cost to have the books shipped from Japan to you. The problem with buying from someone in the US like White Rabbit or Japan Shop is that they already figure shipping from Japan to their store into the price of their books, plus you pay for shipping from the US to Portugal. That said, shipping from Japan to anywhere is usually more expensive than anywhere else. (Or at least it seems that way.)
The AJATT Method - harhol - 2009-05-01
Amiro Wrote:Quick question abut the sentence mining method using SRS. I'm kinda confused. Do i do it like this?That's one way of doing it. You could also in include a literal translation in the answer field to help with remembering grammar. For example, if the sentence is 「ボブは日本に行った」, you could put "Bob [topic] Japan [target] went" in the answer field as well as "Bob went to Japan".
Example sentence: その通りだ！
kana: その とおり だ !
Translation: That's exactly right!
I put the sentence in the question field and the kana and translation in the answer field, right?
Khatzumoto also suggests going kana -> Kanji because of the way it simulates spoken Japanese (you don't hear Kanji, after all), but that sounds very difficult.
The AJATT Method - alyks - 2009-05-01
"ボブは日本に行った" is so boring. Can we have a more interesting example sentence?
How about "ボブはサド・マゾ遊びが好き"
BobはSadomasochismがlikes.
The AJATT Method - rich_f - 2009-05-01
harhol Wrote:Khatzumoto also suggests going kana -> Kanji because of the way it simulates spoken Japanese (you don't hear Kanji, after all), but that sounds very difficult.It's difficult at first, but I've been doing it for a year now, and I don't find it that difficult anymore. I find I get more out of doing it than I did out of just passively reading a bunch of sentences like a turnip.
I look at my SRS deck as a series of Japanese exercises for my brain every day. Some of the exercises are "Read this sentence, provide the readings for all the kanji, and comprehend the whole thing."
And some of them are "Read this sentence out loud in kana (if you can-- you can't always do it depending on where you are), comprehend it, then convert everything into the proper kanji." It's not really rocket science once you get used to it, but it's very useful for getting those kanji engraved into your brain.
Start simple, and build up from there.
The AJATT Method - Codexus - 2009-05-02
alyks Wrote:"ボブは日本に行った" is so boring. Can we have a more interesting example sentence?I fail to see how the second sentence is fundamentally more interesting than the first. Both state a random fact about the same character who has no other attribute than his first name.
How about "ボブはサド・マゾ遊びが好き"
Sentences is isolation are usually uninteresting by their very nature.
The AJATT Method - Rina - 2009-05-02
rich_f, theproblem of thos e grammar dictionaries is not the price, at least now. They were more expensive a fe weeks back.
The problem about them, at least for me is romaji.
Thanks.
The AJATT Method - Mcjon01 - 2009-05-02
CarolinaCG Wrote:rich_f, theproblem of thos e grammar dictionaries is not the price, at least now. They were more expensive a fe weeks back.I don't and never will understand why some people find the mere presence of of romaji horrifying. But, if it makes you feel better, it only exists in the basic dictionary; the intermediate and advanced volumes have all examples written in kanji with furigana.
The problem about them, at least for me is romaji.
Thanks.
The AJATT Method - Rina - 2009-05-02
Mcjon01 Wrote:I don't and never will understand why some people find the mere presence of of romaji horrifying. But, if it makes you feel better, it only exists in the basic dictionary; the intermediate and advanced volumes have all examples written in kanji with furigana.What I don't like about romaji it that I would probably turn my eyes to it instead of the kanji, this time tough, I'll just cover romaji with something.
And yes, that does make me feel better, in fact, that post of yours will make buy all of them, one at a time. Still don't know when. Do you think I should use it alongside with RTK? Not study, because I'm focused on RTK, but an ocasional reading until I finish RTK. After RTK I will concentrate on Genki's and on this dictionary.
Thanks!
The AJATT Method - Codexus - 2009-05-02
Mcjon01 Wrote:I don't and never will understand why some people find the mere presence of of romaji horrifying.Because disdain for romaji is considered "cool" on forums like these. You can belong by adhering to the shared feeling that "romaji are bad". The same applies for English subtitles, Japanese -> English dictionaries, etc. etc.
The AJATT Method - nac_est - 2009-05-02
Codexus Wrote:That statement is a little superficial, isn't it? CarolinaCG stated it correctly: as natives of languages using the western alphabet our brains are, like, 5x faster at recognising the letters than the kanji. And if the two scripts are close it happens automatically, even if you don't want to. Since, on top of that, romaji is plain wrong, it's a very bad thing (romaji is to japanese what katakana is to english).Mcjon01 Wrote:I don't and never will understand why some people find the mere presence of of romaji horrifying.Because disdain for romaji is considered "cool" on forums like these. You can belong by adhering to the shared feeling that "romaji are bad". The same applies for English subtitles, Japanese -> English dictionaries, etc. etc.
Regarding the subtitles, it depends on your philosophy. As for me, I don't like them for the same reason, because I think that their use is more an obstacle than an aid to learning. But opinions on this vary.
The AJATT Method - Codexus - 2009-05-02
Sure that's a valid opinion. But it doesn't explain why people have such extreme reactions every time romaji is mentioned.
Just observe how people like to express their opinion on how romaji are so awful and how others will immediately agree to that, creating a bond between them. If you can see it while maintaining a neutral point of view, you'll see that the real purpose of those exchanges has to do with the group's social cohesion and not the merits of whether or not romaji is bad.
All groups have something that they love to hate.
The AJATT Method - travis - 2009-05-02
I wouldn't worry about the romaji. You only need ADOBJG to look up individual points on grammar, not read the entire thing. A couple of sentences here and there aren't going to make much of a difference in the long run. You can read Japanese to your hearts content in other books.
The point of a grammar textbook is to teach grammar, not reading. It's really difficult for beginners to read the entire sentence as a unit when it's in Japanese, since they're so busy looking up words and unknown kanji etc, that they miss the point. Just reading the sentence is an effort. So instead they give the sentence in romaji, thereby making it much easier to understand the why. Of course once you get to a certain level you can skip the romaji, hence there is no romaji in the Intermediate and Advanced Dictionary.
The problem with romaji is not romaji itself, it's when you don't bother learning kana/kanji from other sources because romaji is good enough.
The AJATT Method - Rina - 2009-05-02
Codexus Wrote:Because disdain for romaji is considered "cool" on forums like these. You can belong by adhering to the shared feeling that "romaji are bad". The same applies for English subtitles, Japanese -> English dictionaries, etc. etc.Do you think I said that to look "cool"? I just wanna train my reading skills, and sure won't do it by reading romaji.
The AJATT Method - igordesu - 2009-05-02
Codexus Wrote:Whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait a sec, guys. Now I'm confused. Now you're talking like hatred for romaji, english subs, and english dictionaries is a choice? I'm so confused...Mcjon01 Wrote:I don't and never will understand why some people find the mere presence of of romaji horrifying.Because disdain for romaji is considered "cool" on forums like these. You can belong by adhering to the shared feeling that "romaji are bad". The same applies for English subtitles, Japanese -> English dictionaries, etc. etc.
The AJATT Method - Tzadeck - 2009-05-02
nac_est Wrote:Since, on top of that, romaji is plain wrong, it's a very bad thing (romaji is to japanese what katakana is to english).This is absolutely not true. There are tons of English sounds that cannot be expressed in Katakana (i.e., グランドキャニオン is not the same as 'Grand Canyon') whereas every single Japanese sound can be expressed accurately in Romaji. In fact, many textbooks that use romaji tell you MORE about how something is pronounced than Japanese text does. For example, many of them include intonation marks or reveal when pronunciation is different from the kana spelling in Japanese.
Learning English by katakana is detrimental to your English, because it's teaching you wrong pronunciation. Learning Japanese with romaji is NOT. It's merely using a system of reading and writing that is not used by native speakers of the language. You might think that this would never me useful, but in certain situations and with certain goals it can be.
Also, saying that romaji is 'wrong' does not actually make sense.